Zend Technologies Introduces New PHP Application Server

Zend Technologies Monday unveiled Zend Platform 3.0, the latest version of its PHP application server, which is designed to facilitate the integration and ongoing management of corporate Web applications that rely on the PHP scripting language. The vendor says the new software will not only ease the integration of these Web applications into corporate production environments and make them more manageable, but will also enhance the end user's experience by improving overall Web application performance, response time and stability.

The application server software includes a number of performance features that promise to help applications run faster. Zend Platform 3.0 uses code acceleration to improve application speed by as much as threefold for better response times and increased scalability. The software also applies dynamic content caching to retrieve pages as much as 150 times faster and output compression to slash output bandwidth by up to 90 percent for faster responsiveness.

Zend Technologies says the software also helps simplify the configuration of new applications by supporting a stable PHP environment. The software supplies the integration to Java through its Java bridge, which makes it possible for developers to create applications that work with Java objects of J2EE services. The application server also delivers the SNMP integration that lets PHP events be fed into corporate enterprise-management applications.

Customers praised the application server on the latter capability. Because SNMP management systems can receive PHP intelligence alerts, the issues that require urgent attention reach the support staff so they can be dealt with, says Jennifer Goodie, senior manager with AMP'd Mobile. Goodie says the new optimization, tuning, and acceleration capabilities are greatly improved over the previous version.Zend Platform 3.0, which comes in three versions, is available immediately.